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WATCH ANY VIDEO ON YOUR iPOD.

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Author: Haney, Mike

Section: HOW 2.0

USE IT BETTER

WATCH ANY VIDEO ON YOUR iPOD


Forget paying $2 an episode for Lost--here's how to toad up your new iPod with home video and recorded TV shows

SO THE iPOD FINALLY got a larger color screen and the ability to play video. Now what? Apple rolled out a handful of downloadable TV shows (at $2 an episode) through the iTunes Music Store, and an increasing number of podcasts now offer video as well as audio. But until that selection grows, the real killer app is the ability to fill the 30 ($300) or 60 ($400) gigabytes of storage with your own video content.

Fortunately, you can convert just about any video, including TiVo'd shows and home movies (but not DVDs [see facing page]), to play on the iPod. For most videos, the simplest method is to buy QuickTime Pro ($30; apple.com) and use its "Export to iPod" command. But a handful of free tools can also convert most file types--including AVI, XviD, MPEG-2 and MOV--if you know the right settings [see box below]. To watch TiVo recordings, download TVHarmony AutoPilot (free; tvharmony.com), which automatically transfers programs from your TiVo to your PC and converts them to a preset format. An hour of video at a decent quality will take roughly 200 megabytes of space; you can watch about three hours of video on a fully charged battery.

Pick up the iPod Universal Dock ($39; apple.com) to output the videos on your iPod back to a TV--perfect for sharing those vacation flicks with friends.

WHY CAN'T I WATCH MY DVDs ON MY iPOD? Viewing a movie you own on another device isn't illegal, but copying the video rite to that device is. That's because to do so, you have to break the copy-protection rock embedded on all commercial DVDs, a violation of the Digital. Millennium Copyright Act. Visit eff.org for more info.

CONVERT VIDEO TO YOUR iPOD 

30 MIN.
FREE
EASY

MAC

  1. Download ffmpegX (free; homepage.mac.com/major4)1.
  2. Choose the "PSP" preset as the target format.
  3. Click the Video tab and change Video Size to 320 x 176 for a widescreen movie or 320 x 240 for a TV show.
  4. Drag your file over the program window and click Encode.

WINDOWS

  1. Download PSP Video 9 (free; pspvideo9.com).
  2. Click Setup, then the Settings tab, and choose "SP/320x240/29.97fps/768kbps Stereo/128kbps" from the pull-down menu. For widescreen movies, change the resolution to 320 x 176.
  3. Click Convert, then One-Click Transcode, and select your file.

FINAL STEP: SEND TO iPOD

Drag the resulting file to iTunes, then click Videos, and drag it to your iPod. On the iPod, navigate to Videos > Movies. Pop the popcorn.

~~~~~~~~

By Mike Haney


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